How Holmes Was Compelled to Remember One Festive Occasion Per Year
by Mirith Griffin
Summary: John Watson reminisces about a memorable Christmas Eve.


**How Sherlock Holmes Was Compelled to Remember One Festive Occasion Per Year: **

**A Reminiscence by John H. Watson, MD**

* * *

Translator's note: In 2010, a strange manuscript was discovered in a private country house long used as a hotel in Surrey. While working on plans for renovations, contractors discovered a dilapidated strongbox in the attic. The box contained, among other things, twenty yellowing sheets of paper covered from top to bottom in dancing stick figures. Upon further examination, the stick figures were revealed to be a form of code. Here is what the manuscript said.

* * *

Of all the Christmas Eves in my memory, none ever proved more astonishing than the one I spent with Sherlock Holmes in December of 1883. We had shared living quarters for two years at that point, and despite – or perhaps because of – our many brushes with danger of the criminal sort, we had fallen into an easy and companionable routine. On the night of the events that I am about to relate, I believed that I was well acquainted not only with every dark alley of London but with every well-secreted corner of my brilliant friend's nature. As I was soon to discover, I could not have been more wrong.

The evening's start was not an auspicious one. Dinner, in particular, was a dismal affair. Mrs. Hudson had gone to the country to visit her sister, and while she had left us a cooked goose with all the trimmings, Holmes had fairly incinerated these while I was busy restoring a small child in Clerkenwell to health after a battle with hypothermia. Said battle was, all things considered, Holmes's fault, as he had run out onto the frozen Serpentine to catch the Hyde Park Strangler, never minding the small skater who was lazily doing figure eights upon the ice. When I returned home around nightfall, 221b Baker Street was filled with the acrid smoke of carbonized poultry, a casualty of Holmes's efforts to reheat our holiday meal. The smoke played in the great man's hair as he sat in his study, fiddling determinedly with his gasogene.

I had not the heart to shout at him. I picked at my plum pudding – a foodstuff which, mercifully, had escaped his attentions – in silence. Holmes, for his part, would not eat, because it was Monday.

Contrary to my usual nature, I was possessed by grave fancies. My brother, last of my kin, had succumbed to liver failure some years previous, and I was preoccupied by bittersweet memories of holiday gatherings with the family when Harry and I were children. Few pastimes breed melancholy more strongly than the contemplation of happy times never to return.

I was also troubled by pain in my left shoulder. Chasing after Holmes in the summer months did my old war wound good, but in cold weather, the site of the jezail bullet objected vigorously to our endeavors. I did not mind exerting myself mightily on behalf of my friend, whose work was invaluable to the public at large, but my shoulder showed no such magnanimity.

As I surveyed the drab wreckage of my pudding, a cheering thought occurred. I had bought Holmes a present. Wrapped in red and green paper, it lay in a long box on the mantelpiece, next to the Persian slipper that served my bohemian companion as a tobacco tin. It was the custom of the Watson clan for each assembled member to open one gift on the night before Christmas. It struck me that this was a tradition I might perpetuate with Holmes, for in the wake of my dismissal from the Army, I had neither kith nor kin in England. Holmes was the closest thing I had to family.

"I say, old man," I called to Holmes, who was still engaged in some infernal alchemical pastime or other, "come and open this. I was going to keep it until tomorrow, but I think you'd better have it now."

Holmes emerged from his bedroom with a dark, bubbling smudge under one eye and his right shirtsleeve burned off at the cuff. "What?" he asked, clearly peeved by the disruption.

"Merry Christmas, my dear Holmes." I walked over to him and handed him the box.

"Walking-stick," he said. As was his habit when first confronted with a box, he did not open it. Rather, he balanced it on one hand, threw it up and down a few times, frowned, then tossed it onto my armchair. He plunked himself down on the settee, his back turned towards my gift.

"Do you like it?" I asked, for Holmes was the sort of man who might like something without it occurring to him to point it out.

He ignored my question. "Malacca wood. Light but strong. Obvious. I've often noted your fondness for malacca. I suspect it reminds you of your time among the rattan palms in the subcontinent."

"Yes," I said, lightly. "Of the two places where I was stationed, India and Afghanistan, I preferred the first. Plenty of opportunity to serve my regiment without the inconvenience of being shot."

Holmes did not smile at my pleasantry. He seemed to be in a black mood himself. I had hoped that he would derive some enjoyment from his present, or at least, from the opportunity to make deductions about it, but none was forthcoming. I began to wonder if I had made some error. My fellow lodger was, after all, not markedly religious, and he had spent our two previous Christmases working. Perhaps the holiday was a sore spot for him. Before I could make any discreet inquiries, he rattled on.

"While the wood of the cane is not heavy, there's something heavy on one end. Normally, this would be a decoration, but you know my tastes and I doubt that you would saddle me with extraneous ornament. Something functional, then. My line of work" – and here I must confess that those occasions when he described the work as "ours" pleased me more – "is dangerous, and it is often necessary for me to stay one step ahead of those who would do me injury. Do I suppose, then, that this is a so-called system cane, or cane with a double purpose? I do.

"Such a cane might contain a reservoir for poison or liquid chloroform; however, I note that this particular cane does not slosh when waved about. If there were such a reservoir, your personal fastidiousness would have required you to fill it before presenting me with the gift. Therefore, there is no reservoir. No, it is more likely that this cane contains a blade, hidden by an unobtrusive handle and secured by a catch. A dagger? Obviously not, as that is a weapon for thieves and cutthroats. More likely, this is a modified steel epée, as you are well aware that I fence."

As I made to congratulate him on his staggering insight, Holmes banished his deductions with a weary hand. "Watson, whatever is this for?"

"It's for you," I said, taken aback by his apparent lack of pleasure in the gift.

"I can see that. But why?"

"I begin to ask myself the same question," I replied, not bothering to cloak my irritation. "There are those who don't celebrate Christmas, but I do, and you are the sole person I have to celebrate with. Excuse me if I have inconvenienced you by prying you away from your noxious experiments."

Holmes knew then that he had put his foot in it. "Come now, Watson. It's very nice. Here, let's have a look at it." He dragged me to the settee, pushed me down in it, then plucked the box from the armchair and sat beside me. Once settled, he made an elaborate display of divesting the cane of its wrappings.

"Harrumph," said I, not entirely mollified.

"Yes, yes," he said. "Malacca. A fool would have gone for mahogany – showier, but heavy and impractical. But what's this?" He released the catch on the stick to reveal a long steel blade. It protruded from one end of an innocuous-looking knob. "Oh, Watson. I suspected as much. An epée is all well and good, but to one skilled in baritsu, the cane itself is all that is required for self-defense. What can a blade do that a mere stick, in the hands of a master, cannot? You have spent money on a superfluity."

He screwed the knob back into the stick, made a few flourishes in the air with it, then chased me to one end of the couch with the thin end. "_En garde_!" he cried.

"Quite," I said, much affronted that he did not like the blade. The item was bespoke, and I had gone to some pains to procure it for him. Using the back of my hand, I flicked the pointed end of his stick from my chest. "All this merriment has worn me out. I believe I shall retire."

I locked the door to my bedroom, donned my nightshirt, and got into bed, there to consider my loneliness and disappointment. Holmes, of course, picked the lock with a hairpin some five minutes later.

"Go away," I said, turning away from him, but he threw my coat on top of me.

"Come, Watson. I have need of you."

I sat up in amazement. "Holmes, this is too much. I am not dressed."

"I did not say I had need of a rather threadbare and unfashionable suit; I have need of its usual inhabitant. On with your coat." When I would not assist him in his lunacy, he manhandled me most dreadfully and succeeded in getting my arms into the sleeves. Then he leaned back on his heels, panting, to admire his handiwork.

"Holmes, I am not going anywhere. I have been gentle with you up until now, but there is a time and a place, and this is neither. If you persist in your roughhousing, I shall be obliged to knock you out cold."

Holmes sat down upon the bed. "Please," he said. "I see now that this has not been the most felicitous of days for you. Let me make it up to you. Honestly, you do not need your suit where we are going. If you find you need one, you may have mine." He plucked at his own apparel to demonstrate.

I scoffed. There was not an article of Holmes's clothing that would fit me except his hat, and furthermore, I was not in the market for a shirt with the underside of its right cuff singed off. However, it is my great undoing that I cannot say no to Holmes on those occasions when he says, "Please." Fortunately for me, these occur no more than thrice a year. I put on shoes and stockings and went with him, nightshirt, overcoat, and all.

* * *

A light snow was falling as the driver took us through the dark London streets. On Holmes's instructions, he let us out at 25 Northumberland Avenue, just around the corner from Trafalgar Square. This was an unimaginative grey stone building perhaps five storeys high. But for its height, it was dishearteningly non-descript. The top three floors appeared to contain offices. These were largely shrouded in shadow, as it was 7:00 on an evening when most decent folk would be at home.

"Ha bloody ha," I said, perceiving that Holmes had succeeded in dragging me out in my nightclothes not to some opium den in the East End, where dress codes are lax, but to an eminently respectable part of town. "If you have brought me out on this freezing night to introduce me to your bookkeeper, I shall return to Baker Street immediately."

"You _are_ my bookkeeper," said Holmes. "Also my Boswell, my launderer, my firearms expert, and my sometime pastry chef. Why do you doubt my intentions? I promise, this visit will do you good."

He marched me up to the double doors. The outer ones were plain oak, but the ones inside were sumptuously ornamented with crimson stained-glass crescents and stars. I began to perceive that this was not an office visit. The doors swung open to reveal a marvelous world of gilt and scarlet.

"What do you think?" asked Holmes.

I looked up at the domed ceiling towering over our heads. It was held aloft by red and gold columns. The walls shone with richly patterned crimson tiles, and the floor was inlaid with rosy marble mosaics.

"I feel as if I am cushioned inside a giant pomegranate," I replied.

Holmes laughed. "I know you are in a pleasant mood when your language veers towards the poetic. You see before you Nevill's Charing Cross Turkish Baths. Just the thing for a man with a sore shoulder."

The cashier, a silent man in a skull cap and a white robe, would not take Holmes's money. Rather, by means of hand signs, he bid attendants come and assist us with our boots. Holmes said something to him in Arabic. The cashier laughed out loud, and the attendants fell back. One of them appeared to be smiling into his sleeve.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"I said my companion was an Army man, and therefore well accustomed to boots. That's what soldiers do, is it not? They shoot, they get shot at, and they take their boots on and off. Shine them too. My hat is off to you Watson. I could never have been a soldier. I can neither blacken a boot nor put sheets on a cot. I lack the requisite domesticity."

"True," I said, with mock seriousness. "There is nothing tame or domestic about you. Civilization has passed you by, Holmes. You are a savage."

"There is some truth to that," said Holmes. "Come with me to the basement and we will cast off the shackles of empire, along with perspiration and dirt."

The next hour passed as in a dream. We stripped off and fashioned ourselves long kilts made of towels, then repaired to the gentle warmth of the tepidarium. Afterwards, we proceeded to a second room, which Holmes called the caldarium. This had all the heat of the Registan Desert. By this point, we were both aglow. Unwilling to leave well enough alone, Holmes insisted upon half-broiling himself in the laconium, hottest of the three rooms, while I contented myself with quick dip in the plunge pool. The cool water was heavenly. Later, I sipped a glass of red wine kindly provided for me by one of the staff, while Holmes swam in the pool, looking for all the world as though water were his natural element.

There are few sights more arresting than Holmes when he is having a swim. He has a natural grace that looks odd on land, but which is perfectly at home in the water. His silvery body moves like a wave, and his dark hair whirls around his head like a cloud of minnows. I must have been staring, because after a few moments, Holmes ceased his ablutions and fixed me with a curious gaze.

"I declare, Holmes. You are a …"

"A what?"

I coughed. "A haddock born and bred."

Although I had wished to provide myself with some verbal camouflage, I regretted my choice of words as soon as they left my mouth.

"I see," replied Holmes. "Very flattering, I'm sure. It has always been my ambition to be compared to a finnan haddie. If you're quite done with your picturesque metaphors, perhaps you will be so good as to pull me out of the pool?"

I reached a hand towards Holmes and pulled him out, hoping he had not divined the thoughts behind the look. Holmes had an effect on me that no man has had before or since. I marveled at him. He was striking-looking, it's true, but what appealed to me more than anything was his mind. Perhaps one man in a thousand could equal his physical beauty, but there was not one in a million who could equal his genius. I had sometimes admitted to myself, in the wee hours of the morning when I was unable to sleep, that I was more than a little in love with him.

The ground floor had a number of couches in groups of four. Customers stretched out on them, talking quietly. Each seemed to have his own reason for coming to the baths on Christmas Eve. Some were Christian sailors and merchants far from home. Some appeared to be members of the other Abrahamic religions. No doubt most were bachelors, like Holmes and me, looking for a bit of color and comfort in a holiday otherwise bereft of both.

From our perch on the ground floor, I could see the balustrades of the first. The two floors were connected by a grand mahogany staircase. This was positioned in the atrium under the aforementioned dome, which soared above our heads.

"Let's go up there," I said, for I spied couches on the first floor and I was anxious to see all that I could of this hidden world.

For no reason I could discern, Holmes looked startled. "Very well," he said. He followed me up the staircase.

The first floor was even more beautiful than the one below. I gazed up at the underside of the dome. It was decorated with stained-glass panels arrayed in an octagonal formation around a fine ventilation grille of Moorish design. The ironwork was so delicate as to look like filigree.

While the couches on the ground floor were arranged to promote camaraderie, clustered as they were in groups of four, the couches on the first floor were conducive to privacy. Most were partitioned off by thick, fringed curtains in groups of two. While the ground floor was a place of boisterous jokes and easy conversation, the first floor was given over to murmurs and rustles. This pleased me, as I knew Holmes was not generally fond of noise, except when he was the one creating it. We settled ourselves on a pair of couches in a remote corner, drew the curtain around us, placed our towels on a nearby coat rack, and wrapped our middles in one sheet each. I smelled incense, mahogany, sandalwood.

"Who would have thought that such an oasis as this would exist so close to Whitehall?" I said. "It's another world."

"Mm," said Holmes, looking about him, although in our velvet cocoon, there was virtually nothing to see. He had a large purple blotch on one hip. He had sustained this while wrestling the Strangler to the ice.

"Honestly," I said. "You're not healing well. This is what comes of not eating properly. I wouldn't be surprised if you were the last man in London to have scurvy." I reached out to palpate the site of the injury, but Holmes stayed my hand.

"You," he said. "Get out."

"Holmes?"

"Not you." Holmes threw the curtains apart and pointed a long finger at a customer comfortably ensconced in an armchair. "You. The police detective. Go on. There's nothing of interest for you here."

"What's he on about?" said the customer, addressing me. Like many people first confronted with Holmes, he seemed to consider me his minder.

I have to say that the customer looked nothing like a police detective. He was a large man in a small towel. He had a gold hoop in one ear, and much of his right arm was covered by a tattoo of a vast, many-tentacled sea monster shaking a hapless fishing boat. He looked more familiar with Billingsgate than with Bow Street.

"Holmes," I said, "I hardly think …"

"On the contrary, Watson, you often think; you're merely neglecting to in this instance. This gentleman, and I use the term loosely, is here on a raid."

"Hold on now," said our interlocutor. He rose to his feet and ambled towards the two of us. "You've a bee in your bonnet, guv'nor, that much is clear, but I ain't the one what put it there. There best be civil words on your tongue if you're going to make free with Cutlass Jack."

"Cutlass Jack, my eye," said Holmes. "Nightstick Ned, more like. This groove on the underside of your chin? Comes from buckling the strap on your constable's helmet too tight. You're a detective, yes, but you've only been one for a week or so; before then, you walked the beat. This earring?" He released its clasp and plucked it from the man's bald head. "Not held on by a piercing, I see. The tattoo? Fake. There's no such thing as a kraken with nine tentacles."

"There is if he's met Cutlass Jack," said this worthy.

"Need I go on?" said Holmes. He grabbed one of the man's hands and turned it over, exposing the palm. "Not one callus," he announced. "Here's a hand that never gripped a rope or hefted a barrel. Your accent aims for Cockney but arrives at Bournemouth. You recently had someone shave your head, but whoever it was hadn't had much practice at it, because they nicked you behind the ear. This is not your usual haircut. You chose it, I gather, to disguise the fact that you normally have short hair with a bit of a circular wave or indentation around the crown from wearing your helmet day in and day out. And as for your tattoo" – here Holmes licked his index finger and drew a disdainful line down the man's arm, gathering blue ink as he went – "I assure you, it is counterfeit."

"Now look, you great tit."

"Are you still here?" said Holmes, his exasperation reaching its peak. "Very well, your wife no longer loves you. Your father has syphilis. Your mistress in Brighton…"

At this, Cutlass Jack fairly ran for the mahogany stairs, one finger in each ear. "Not listening," said he. "You can go to the devil, Sherlock Holmes!"

"You have chased him off too soon," I said, shaking my head. "Pirate or not, I wished to advise him to get his heart checked. The sizeable crease in his right earlobe bodes ill."

"That's not all that bodes ill," said Holmes. "I've dealt with his type before."

"What did he want?"

"To catch two sodomites in the act of doing something lewd."

I fairly goggled. "Us? Preposterous! Why on earth…"

Holmes sighed. "Catching murderers is difficult. They move from place to place. A bathhouse, on the other hand, holds still. You and I are on the secluded first floor of a bathhouse after 7:00 pm, which is when the rates go down and the married men go home. That in itself is grounds for suspicion. New detectives need arrests in order to hold on to their positions, and our friend found this a likely spot. He heard you ushering me up the stairs and felt certain you had designs on my virtue. Fortunately, my methods are widely discussed by the constabulary, and he realized who he was dealing with as soon as I began to make uncomfortable observations about his home life."

"But I only reached for your hip," I said.

Holmes held up a warning hand. "Watson."

"Do not Watson me. How could anyone think…" Here I reached out my hand to replicate my earlier gesture. As my hand made contact with his skin, something unexpected happened. As if against his will, Holmes threw his head back and closed his eyes. A look of pleasure and pain passed over him, and his arm burst out in goosebumps. I had only ever seen him look that way before while listening to Sarasate, his favorite violinist, at the Opera House. He shivered a moment, then opened his eyes.

"That's how," he said. "Don't delve further into things you don't want to know."

Stunned, I pulled back my hand. "But you are immune to the softer passions," I protested. "You've said it yourself."

"_You've _said it," responded Holmes. "You've said it so often you believe it. Your powers of diagnosis are often keen, but they have failed you here. What I'm immune to is the romantic charm of women."

"Why did you not tell me?"

"What, and get myself jailed? Or worse, to have you withdraw your friendly hand from me as though contact with my skin were now a defilement?"

"As if it could ever be such a thing!"

"This was a mistake, Watson. I should never have brought you here. I meant only to give you a change of scenery and some relief from your shoulder, but I have overplayed my hand. I will go downstairs to the smoking room and wait for you there. If you would like my suit, you are welcome to it."

He made to leave. I grabbed his slender wrist and held him fast by it.

"Stop," he said, miserably. "There is nothing you can say …"

Taking his advice, I said nothing. Rather, I pulled him in close and kissed him gently on the lips. When I opened my eyes, he was staring at me as if I had three heads.

"I did not say I had need of a rather posh and overpriced suit," I said gravely. "I have need of its usual inhabitant."

Holmes gazed upon me with incredulity. Then he laughed. It did me good to hear it. The sound was not long in duration, however, for immediately thereafter, he wrapped his long arms around me and kissed me hard. I felt desire for him jolt me to the core, then radiate outwards, electric.

"We could catch a cab," I panted. "We could be home in half an hour."

"Half an hour is thirty minutes too long," said Holmes.

I sighed with relief, for the idea of prying myself from Holmes's body even for a moment was most unwelcome. "Tell me," I said. "Tell me what you would have me do."

Holmes muttered shyly into my hair. I was unaccustomed to such bashfulness from him.

"What?" I said. I pulled back to look at him.

"Let me see you," he said.

"You _do_ see me," I said, remembering his deductions on the occasion of our first meeting. "You see everything about me. That is what you have done from the first."

Holmes gave me a rueful smile. "And yet I have missed that which was most important. Please, John. Let me see more."

I have already said that I was susceptible to Holmes's rare instances of courtesy. Now he was calling me by my Christian name, something he had never done before, and I was powerless against him. I let him lead me to one of the two tall couches and sit me down on it. Just as I was wondering where he would sit, he went to his knees in front of me. The sight of his dark head inclined between my legs made my nerves crackle and sing.

"Holmes. Holmes," I moaned, as he contented himself with pressing his wicked lips against one of my ankles. "If you love me, then for God's sake, hurry."

"Patience," whispered Holmes. "You have made me wait."

"When?"

"Two years," said Holmes. He rubbed the side of his face against the inside of one of my calves. I thrilled to feel his cheek somewhere so intimate. It was slightly rough against my leg.

My sheet proved an obstacle to his progress. He nudged it upwards with his nose.

"This is highly irregular," he said, "but do you think, in light of current circumstances, that I might be allowed to unwrap a second gift on Christmas Eve?"

"Holmes. There is some part of 'hurry' you are not comprehending." Scarcely aware of what I was doing, I wrapped my legs around his neck. "Do whatever you wish with me, but do it in all good haste."

Holmes began to inquire as to whether the fact that I was pulling him towards my groin meant that there was something I wanted him to investigate there, but something in my eyes – presumably desperation – caused him to stop mid-sentence. "I'm sorry. I have teased you overmuch. May I touch you, John? I so want to touch you."

I gasped at the sensation of his breath against my thigh. "It's not a question of 'You may,'" I admitted. "You must."

At that, he unwrapped me. Closing my eyes, I gave myself up to his ministrations. What I expected next was to feel his hands upon me, but this was not to be.

"Oh! Oh _God_," said I, as warm heat engulfed me. I turned my head and bit my own arm to keep quiet. Holmes, for his part, merely hummed encouragement, as his mouth was occupied.

I had heard of this, this lovemaking with lips and tongue and throat, but I had thought it the province of highly skilled courtesans. I would never have dreamed that it was something Holmes knew how to do.

"Holmes, please. My dear one, my own. I cannot last. Pull off me, or I'll…"

Rather than pulling away, Holmes took my hand in his and rubbed the back of it with his thumb, silently urging me on. His grey eyes were fixed upon me. I could stand it no longer. My hips lifted of their own accord, seeking communion with him. With a long, stifled cry, I spent inside his sweet mouth.

When I returned to a state of alertness, I found that Holmes was wrapped around me on one of the two couches. The couch would only have been enough for one large man, but Holmes is as slender as a reed, and I am not over-tall.

I pressed my thigh between Holmes's and found him hard and wanting. I pushed him over onto his back. For a man much given to contrariness, he was marvelously acquiescent. I lay on my side next to him and let my hand wander up his sheet.

"Show me how to give you pleasure," I whispered. I was mindful of the other bath clients. Perhaps ten feet away, there was another curtained alcove, and I thought I heard rustles and sighs coming from that direction. "Do you like it slow?" I demonstrated. "Or fast?"

"What I mostly like," said Holmes, "is for you to be the one doing it." His pupils were huge in the gaslight, made rosy by a hundred red paper screens. "Kiss me."

I kissed him and felt him grow still more rigid against me. I thought of the swordstick I had bought him. Its polished wood was smooth and satiny to the touch, but inside was something of pure steel. That is how Holmes felt in my hand. I stroked him and let my fingers impart a dozen secrets to his flesh – secrets about the way I felt about him, secrets about how long I had felt it, secrets about what I ached to do to him now that we both knew it. Holmes moaned and trembled in my arms.

"John," he murmured against my lips. "John. The crisis is nearly upon me. I want to tell you something when it happens. I love you. Do you understand? I love you." He kissed me again, this time letting his tongue linger inside. And with that, I felt his warm seed leave his body and coat my hand.

* * *

After a certain amount of post-coital nuzzling (on my part) and biting (on the part of Holmes, who is ungovernable not only before but after sex), we returned to the plunge pool to rinse off again. If the attendants thought anything of this, they kept their remarks to themselves.

We were offered a stint in the shampooing room, where clients receive an extra full-body wash and a massage, but Holmes had got it into his head that he didn't want anyone erasing the memory, still young, of my touch upon his person, and he declined. I accompanied him to the hot showers instead.

"When you said you had dealt with that detective's type before," I asked, "did you mean that this was not your first attempted raid?"

"Not my first, no. The first was in a bathhouse in South Kensington."

"What were you doing there?" I asked.

"Victor Trevor was down from Norfolk for the weekend. He brought me."

"I see," said I, not altogether pleased.

"And yes, he was attracted to me, but I didn't understand that when I consented to go. I thought he was just in need of a wash."

I laughed in spite of myself. "Holmes, you are impossible."

"I am not impossible," he said, puffing himself up as much as his lithe body would permit. "I am merely improbable. There's a difference."

"So what happened at the bathhouse?"

"Not much. Victor offered himself to me, I began to make my apologies, and Lestrade barged in."

"What!?"

"I never told you that? It's how I met Lestrade. He was performing a raid on the bathhouse."

"Why were you not marched off to jail?"

"First off, because sections 61 and 62 of the Offenses against the Person Act only prohibit buggery and attempts at same. I was neither buggering anyone nor making any endeavor to do so."

"Then why did he not jail Victor?"

"Because I told him that the way to ascend the ranks of the London police was not by harassing clients at the bathhouse, but by catching murderers. He said that was all well and good, and I said, yes, it was, because it would be the work of a few minutes to point out the poisoner in the caldarium to him. The man in question wasn't very prolific, having killed only one elderly miser for the inheritance money, but everyone has to start somewhere. When Lestrade picked him up, his hands were still stained yellow by the mushrooms he'd used to dispatch his victim. He'd come to the baths to remove the stain."

"Holmes," I said, though I knew this was a bit of a non sequitur, "I love you."

"I know," said Holmes, gathering me into his soapy arms. "Now let's get home before they throw us out. Usually the bathhouse is open all night, but they're closing at 11:00 for Christmas."

"Oh, so now you remember Christmas," I said, teasing, for I knew he had not bought me a present or, until this excursion of ours, put any effort into the holiday beyond setting fire to Mrs. Hudson's goose.

"I do," said Holmes, "but I expect it will fade from my mind again. Christmas Eve, however, has made a lasting impression. Let's celebrate it again next year."

* * *

And so we did. The next year, when Mrs. Hudson brought up the subject of visiting her sister on the twenty-fifth of December, Holmes pricked up his ears.

"The day after Christmas Eve? Of course. Do as you like."

Mrs. Hudson stared at him in amazement. "Who calls Christmas 'the day after Christmas Eve?'" she asked.

"He does," I said solemnly.

"I never heard the like. It's like calling Charles Dickens 'the father of Charles Dickens, Jr.'"

"The father of whom?" asked Holmes.

"Holmes does not celebrate Christmas," I explained, content to be his translator. "He celebrates Christmas Eve."

"The very idea," said Mrs. Hudson, wiping her eye with the hem of her apron. "Now I've heard it all. He's a good man, but I tell you this: he's a rare one and no mistake."

"That he is, Mrs. Hudson."

"I can hear you both," complained Holmes.

"Look after him, John."

"I will and I do," I said, smiling fondly at the subject of our conversation. And at this, Holmes fell silent, for he knew very well it was true.

* * *

A/N: I shiver with gratitude and admiration for my dear friend and editor **ancientreader. **Even with hardly any lead time, she makes me talk pretty. Any remaining errors are the result of my own intransigence.

As the year winds down, I would like to take a moment to thank a few people who have gone above and beyond the call of fannish duty in terms of brightening my days in the last twelve months – perhaps by creating art, perhaps by writing or translating stories, perhaps by giving me chocolate, or perhaps just by offering a friendly ear when I needed it. I have the terrible feeling that I have forgotten somebody, so if it's you, please let me know so that I can facepalm publicly. Heartfelt thanks and appreciation go to: **afrogeekgoddess**, **Anarion**, **ancientreader **(again), **Ariane DeVere**, **AxeMeAboutAxinomancy**, **Br0-Harry**, **Calico Crow**, **daysofstorm**, **IKEA Girl**, **inconcvbl**, **mattsloved1**, **Mr. CSI**, **Mr. Mirith**, **Rimmaara**, **snogandagrope**, **snoopydance4me**, **staceuo**, **Sunlitlake**, **SweetLateJuliet**, **thisisforyou**, **TSylvestris**, **Verity Burns**, and **youcantsaymylastname.**

Warm thanks also to every person who has favorited or commented or just read. You make me happy.

In "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client," Watson comments that both he and Holmes "had a weakness for the Turkish bath." He further remarks that "it was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found [Holmes] less reticent and more human than anywhere else." Having seen the building that housed these baths (conveniently located right across Craven Passage from the Sherlock Holmes Pub!) during my visit to London last month, I have taken the liberty of imagining Holmes and Watson enjoying the facilities in what I hope is a resplendently human way.


End file.
